A breath of tanked air: You have
to dress up
like a sado-masochist, but nothing
beats the sensation of
diving...
© New Statesman written by Stephen Weinman
"Why do you want to go diving, anyway?" my wife asked me. I was back from a long weekend in Devon, limping slightly after falling over a rock as I helped launch the boat in a heavy swell. I had also declined dinner, which, admittedly, was unusual for me; I suspected a slight case of gastro-intestinal baro-trauma, caused by swallowing air on descent and suffering the effects of its expansion in the stomach on returning to the surface.
The onset of a cold was at that point no more than a misgiving, although the loss of my new underwater torch was fast becoming a certainty.
I had been telling my wife what a good time I'd had when she lobbed in her question. It was put in a genuine spirit of inquiry. But I was not sure I could answer it concisely, I told her, as I gingerly applied the apres solaire. It's remarkable how sneakily the rays reflect off the sea on an overcast day.
I had always enjoyed watersports in a mild sort of way (adrenalin rushes are hard to come by on the Serpentine) but joining a diving club was not inspired by any fermenting passion to plumb the abyss. I had been persuaded to attend a swimming-pool "suck it and see" session, part of the club's annual recruitment drive. That year's campaign proved so successful that demand far outstripped places. My application was rejected. Reversing Groucho Marx's tenet, I became determined to join this club which felt able to do without me as a member. I got in on the next intake.
If I had ever considered diving for fitness, my first sight of the bulky outlines of various members looming through the smoke haze at the bar soon disabused me. My idea then was to get some posy gear, a quick run-through on its use and go watch fish. But first, long months had to be spent training in the pool. By then I had realised how many people in the club, including other newcomers, had apparently been raised on a diet of boats, knots, charts and tides, gooseberry sea-squirts' sexual habits and all the minutiae of the underwater world. They also seemed to be techno-junkies to a member, forever discussing the 34 latest equipment.
I had always considered myself impractical, now I knew it. But I found myself wanting to be like them, to acquire new skills and knowledge, to feel disdain for non-divers who call fins "flippers" and imagine "neutral buoyancy" to be a stock-market term. I wanted to understand how a regulator worked and which was the best.
The great thing about diving is that there are always new qualifications to pursue and endless courses on marine activities: how to handle a boat, rescue people, identify species of shark or even excavate a sunken temple.
Diving, especially in Britain, can be hard work, although the arduous preliminaries make the feeling of release all the sweeter as you head for the seabed. Before that can happen, however, you have to lug a lot of heavy gear and bounce about on the edge of a rigid inflatable boat with a crowd of people who keep bumping into you.
It is a blustery morning, the sky the colour of a dustbin, and you feel mildly nauseous, not so much because of the motion of the ocean, more from that pint too many the night before, the hearty guest-house breakfast and the petrol fumes from an outboard motor someone has carelessly left upwind.
You are kitted up ready to go like some aquatic sado-masochist: zips and buckles constricting neck and chest, hood too tight, mask steamed up and nose running. Despite what feels like a ton of steel hanging on your back you try to manoeuvre a two-foot fin on to your foot without suffering a hernia or knocking your "buddy" off the boat. The water looks every bit as "snotgreen" and "scrotum-tightening" as Joyce once described it.
But what I remember that evening as I lie in a steaming bath is how amazingly intact the wreck was, how I found a giant crab guarding a gun barrel and how the scallops hopped around in the sand while an octopus gesticulated furiously at me. Nobody minds a little discomfort so long as they get to spend an hour or two playing underwater.
Diving's sub-groups - the marine-biologists, wreckers, cavers, photographers and film-makers, archaeologists, snorkellers and "tekkies" - all have their own takes on the experience. When I asked fellow divers what they most enjoyed, everyone replied differently. "It's such a great way of being outdoors," said one. "If you're diving, you're messing about with boats or onshore talking about your last dive and preparing for your next one."
You get to know people unusually well, said another, because your interdependence - the buddy system of mutual support - in sometimes extreme conditions makes a mockery of any pretensions. Another described diving as the perfect release from the stresses of work, being stressful enough in itself to erase any memory of what you do for a living. One member appreciated the equality: that there are no concessions for the sexes, and those disabled on land can be enabled underwater.
When I first went diving I loved the sci-fi quality of what I saw. One can experience a weightless sensation, otherworldly colours, heavy breathing and peculiar creatures in a nightclub, but I would rather do so on a coral reef, or even a few metres down under Swanage Pier.
This alien environment will always be the magnet, but every time I roll in off the boat it feels a shade more like being back in my element. That's why I want to go diving.
© New Statesman written by Stephen Weinman